Georgia Street is an east–west street in the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Its section in Downtown Vancouver, designated West Georgia Street, serves as one of the primary streets for the financial and central business districts, and is the major transportation corridor connecting downtown Vancouver with the North Shore (and eventually Whistler) by way of the Lions Gate Bridge. The remainder of the street, known as East Georgia Street between Main Street and Boundary Road and simply Georgia Street within Burnaby, is more residential in character, and is discontinuous at several points.

West of Seymour Street, the thoroughfare is part of Highway 99. The entire section west of Main Street was previously designated part of Highway 1A, and markers for the ‘1A’ designation can still be seen at certain points.

Starting from its western terminus at Chilco Street by the edge of Stanley Park, Georgia Street runs southeast, separating the West End from the Coal Harbour neighbourhood. It then runs through the Financial District; landmarks and major skyscrapers along the way include Living Shangri-La (the city’s tallest building), Trump International Hotel and Tower, Royal Centre, 666 Burrard tower, Hotel Vancouver and upscale shops, the HSBC Canada Building, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgia Hotel, Four Seasons Hotel, Pacific Centre, the Granville Entertainment District, Scotia Tower, and the Canada Post headquarters. The eastern portion of West Georgia features the Theatre District (including Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts), Library Square (the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library), Rogers Arena, and BC Place. West Georgia’s centre lane between Pender Street and Stanley Park is used as a counterflow lane.

East of Cambie Street, Georgia Street becomes a one-way street for eastbound traffic, and connects to the Georgia Viaduct for eastbound travellers only; westbound traffic is handled by Dunsmuir Street and the Dunsmuir Viaduct, located one block to the north.

East Georgia Street begins at the intersection with Main Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown, then runs eastwards through Strathcona, Grandview–Woodland and Hastings–Sunrise to Boundary Road. East of the municipal boundary, Georgia Street continues eastwards through Burnaby until its terminus at Grove Avenue in the Lochdale neighbourhood. This portion of Georgia Street is interrupted at several locations, such as Templeton Secondary School, Highway 1 and Kensington Park.

Georgia Street was named in 1886 after the Strait of Georgia, and ran between Chilco and Beatty Streets. After the first Georgia Viaduct opened in 1915, the street’s eastern end was connected to Harris Street, and Harris Street was subsequently renamed East Georgia Street.

The second Georgia Viaduct, opened in 1972, connects to Prior Street at its eastern end instead. As a result, East Georgia Street has been disconnected from West Georgia ever since.

On June 15, 2011 Georgia Street became the focal point of the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot.

There’s something rotten at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Massive open-air landfills and the pollution they bring are stirring tensions across Russia, provoking some of the most sustained protests since Putin came to power almost two decades ago. Thousands of people have defied police bans to march against planned landfill openings, blaming the mounting piles of garbage for health problems and foul-smelling air.

One hotspot is the Aleksinsky landfill near the town of Klin, northwest of Moscow, where locals held a peaceful demonstration last week. The towering mound of rotting, putrid garbage about the height of a six-story house sits just 400 meters from a school. “When the smell from the dump is bad, parents keep their kids at home,” said a woman who declined to be quoted by name and whose teenage son attends the school. “The children get ill a lot.”

Originally designed as a dump for locally produced garbage, the open air landfill, which stretches over an area covering some 32,000 square meters — equivalent to roughly four-and-a-half football pitches — has been used since 2014 to dispose of millions of tons of untreated and unsorted waste that is trucked in daily from Moscow.

Locals complain that the often overpowering stench from the garbage causes headaches, nausea and other health issues, while eco-activists have reported dangerously high levels of nitric oxide and hydrogen sulfide in the air. Kombinat, the garbage disposal company that manages the landfill, insists the dump complies with all safety regulations and poses no health risk.

Critics are unconvinced. “What are we leaving for the children? For the future? Dirty air, dirty water, and dirty soil?” said Tatiana Bakhmetyeva, an eco-activist who attended the rally. Other protesters say pollution from the landfill is a violation of their right to a clean environment, which is enshrined in Russia’s much-abused post-Soviet constitution.

Just 4 percent of Russia’s waste products are recycled or reused, according to Greenpeace. (That’s compared to over 50 percent in European countries such as Germany and Switzerland.) Almost all of the country’s remaining refuse — around 70 million tons a year — is simply dumped in huge landfills that are frequently located dangerously close to residential areas. These landfills cover a total area of land that is four times larger than Cyprus. In 10 years, ecologists say, that area will double in size, unless urgent steps are taken.

A new tax hike on garbage collection introduced on January 1 is also contributing to growing discontent. “They raised taxes, but the [garbage] problem hasn’t gone away,” said Denis Volkov, the deputy head of the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Moscow. “This is not just an ecological problem, but a social one, too.”

So far, Putin, whose approval ratings have taken a fall thanks to a wildly unpopular increase in the national pension age and falling living standards, doesn’t appear to be in a rush to change things. When pressed in December on the country’s poor record on recycling and waste reduction, he brushed off concerns, saying that implementing effective policies to minimize the amount of toxic garbage building up in Russian landfills would “require a huge investment and time.”

Klin’s residents aren’t the only ones to be angry. Over the past 18 months, protests over the pollution spewing from overflowing trash dumps have taken place in around a dozen towns near Moscow.

Protesters allege the landfills are controlled by a “garbage mafia” made up of Kremlin-linked officials. Last year, a company headed by Igor Chaika, the son of Yury Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general, won a €500 million contract to handle waste disposal in the region surrounding Moscow.

The “garbage protests,” as they have been dubbed by Russian media, are indicative of a major challenge for the Kremlin — identifying potential hotspots for discontent and resolving conflicts when they emerge — said Tatiana Stanovaya, a commentator for the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

In many cases, she said, regional governors are wary of entering into dialogue with protesters because they are afraid of being seen as weak, or even sympathizing with opposition groups, who have been dubbed traitors to Russia by Putin and other Kremlin-linked figures.

“Without a radical change in the approach to governing, there will soon be numerous mass protests in Russia’s regions, some of which will be crushed,” said Stanovaya.

“In essence, Russia is moving toward a crisis of Putin’s model of political governance, which is ceasing to function in the face of the growing alienation of the authorities from society.”

Similar demonstrations have also been held in Siberia and Russia’s far north. Earlier this month, in Arkhangelsk, a city in northern Russia, up to 5,000 people took part in one of the region’s biggest ever unsanctioned protests to oppose the construction of a landfill intended for garbage from Moscow. Protesters carried signs that read “The North Is Not A Dump!” and marched on the city governor’s office. Police detained around 20 people on charges of taking part in an illegal protest.

The protests haven’t always been peaceful. Last year, in Volokolamsk, near Moscow, furious locals turned on officials after toxic gases from a nearby open-air landfill poisoned almost 200 people, including scores of children. When Yevgeny Gavrilov, the Volokolamsk district’s top official, arrived at the local hospital, he was struck several times on the head by irate residents. Andrei Vorobyov, the governor, fled the scene after chunks of ice were hurled in his direction. In May, the driver of a truck taking garbage to the landfill in Volokolamsk was targeted by an unknown gunman, but escaped with minor injuries.

The handful of officials who have dared to lend their support to the protesters’ cause have paid a heavy price for their defiance.

In 2017 and 2018, Alexander Shestun, the head of the Serpukhov district near Moscow, angered the Kremlin by allowing eco-activists to hold protests against a local landfill. He also used his Mercedes to prevent trucks from taking garbage to the dump.

Shestun was summoned to the Kremlin, where officials from the FSB security service and presidential administration threatened to have him jailed on trumped-up charges if he did not stand down as head of the Serpukhov district, according to secretly recorded audio that he uploaded to YouTube.

“They will steamroll you, and you will have bad f***ing problems. You’ll go to jail. Don’t you want to live?” a man Shestun identified as an FSB department chief can be heard saying. (The eco-protests weren’t the only reason the Kremlin wanted Shestun out; he was also embroiled in a row with powerful officials over plans to reclassify Serpukhov as a municipal precinct.)

In June, armed police raided Shestun’s family home and arrested him on fraud charges. He has been in custody ever since and faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of the charges, which he says are revenge for his refusal to follow orders. His family have posted a number of video appeals to Putin, but the Kremlin has not responded. Shestun is currently on hunger strike in protest, and was hospitalized last week after losing consciousness.

Pyotr Lazarev, who was mayor of Volokolamsk when protests against the landfill began in the town, has also suffered for his willingness to side with eco-activists. After he gave the green light to protest rallies, and even took part in several himself, his home was raided by police and he was warned by “criminals” to stay out of the row over the landfill, he told Russian media last year. He stepped down as mayor in October, citing problems with his health.

Back in Klin, eco-activist Yelena Polyakova said the pungent local landfill is as much a problem for the local administration as it is for local residents.

The mound of trash, she said, makes a mockery of officials’ attempts to attract foreign tourists to a house museum dedicated to Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the 19th century classical composer, who wrote some of his final works in the town.

“Can you imagine Mozart’s house museum in Salzburg standing next to an enormous pile of crap?” Polyakova asked.

Russia’s once-extensive Soviet-era stockpile, which has propped up its war effort in Ukraine, is dwindling, and could affect Moscow’s ability to continue advancing in the east of the country, according to a new report.

The Kremlin has relied heavily on Soviet reserves of tanks, armored vehicles and weapons to push forward with its offensives across the hundreds of miles of front lines in Ukraine.

Slews of more advanced equipment, like newer main battle tanks, were destroyed, damaged or captured in the initial phases of the war after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia has hiked its defense spending to expand tank and vehicle production, and turned to thousands of mothballed vehicles in storage to fill the gaps.

Reserves of tanks and armored vehicles are key for fighting the battles going on in eastern and northeastern Ukraine, as are supplies of artillery systems.

But experts told The Economist in an article published on Tuesday that by mid to late 2025, Russia’s ability to use vehicles that have long sat in storage will have reached a “critical point of exhaustion.” Many of Russia’s T-72 tanks have reportedly been exposed to the elements since the fall of the Soviet Union in late December 1991, and have likely suffered for it.

Russian forces may have to fight a more defensive battle in Ukraine by the end of the year, Michael Gjerstad, an analyst with the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank, told the outlet.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

The IISS think tank said in February 2024 that Russia has been able to replenish its extensive tank and vehicle losses in Ukraine, but much of the hardware heading for the front lines are “not new.” Moscow is often sacrificing quality for quantity, the think tank added.

According to Ukraine’s count, Russia has lost well over 8,000 tanks. This estimate comes in higher than many Western intelligence figures, which typically sit at under roughly half of this tally. Dutch open-source intelligence outlet, Oryx, has visually verified 3,243 Russian tank losses, but stresses the true number is likely to be higher.

The IISS estimated in February that Russia had lost at least 3,000 tanks, adding at the time: “To put that in perspective, Russia’s battlefield tank losses are greater than the number it had when it launched its offensive in 2022.”

Moscow is also contending with having to replace the barrels of artillery systems like howitzers that are in constant use, according to Tuesday’s report. The barrels in artillery pieces littered along the hotspots of fighting need replacing as frequently as every few months, the outlet said, with Russia taking barrels from old, towed artillery pieces to fix onto self-propelled howitzers for the battlefield.

Ukraine has lost a significant number of its own vehicles and artillery pieces, although it is hard to discern the extend of the losses. According to Russia’s figures, Kyiv has lost a collective total of over 16,602 tanks and armored vehicles and more than 12,000 artillery pieces. Oryx puts the tank and armored vehicle losses at just shy of 3,500.

Khara Khoto is an ancient city located in the western part of Inner Mongolia. It was once a thriving city, thanks to its location on the famous Silk Road. But a devastating massacre left the city in ruins and, until recently, many locals refused to approach the ruins of Khara Khoto, for fear of its ancient ghosts.

This contributed to the discovery of the city’s ruins at the beginning of the 20th century. Excavations at Khara Khoto have uncovered thousands of manuscripts in the Tangut language, arguably one of the site’s most impressive finds. These were preserved by the area’s dry climate and spared from looters due to the remoteness of the ruins.

The name ‘Khara Khoto’ literally means ‘Black City’ in the Mongolian language. This is also seen in the name given to the city by the Chinese, i.e. Heicheng. As for the Tanguts, who founded the city, they knew it as Yijinai.

Interestingly, Khara Khoto is believed to have been mentioned by the famous Venetian traveler, Marco Polo. It has been identified (by the archaeologist Aurel Stein) as Etzina (also spelled as Ezina) in The Travels of Marco Polo. The description of the city by Marco Polo is as follows:

“Leaving this city of Kampion, and travelling for twelve days in a northerly direction, you come to a city named Ezina, at the commencement of the sandy desert, and within the province of Tanguth. The inhabitants are idolaters. They have camels, and much cattle of various sorts. Here you find lanner-falcons and many excellent sakers. The fruits of the soil and the flesh of the cattle supply the wants of the people, and they do not concern themselves with trade. Travellers passing through this city lay in a store of provisions for forty days, because, upon their leaving it to proceed northwards, that space of time is employed in traversing a desert, where there is not any appearance of dwelling, nor are there any inhabitants excepting a few during the summer, among the mountains and in some of the valleys.”

As mentioned by Marco Polo, Khara Khoto is situated on the edge of the ‘sandy desert’, i.e. the Gobi Desert. Although the city lies on the Silk Road, its inhabitants were not involved in trade and commerce. Instead, they made a living by supplying provisions to those who were making the journey into the desert.

When Marco Polo wrote his work about his travels to Asia during the 13th century, Khara Khoto had already existed for several centuries. It is often claimed that the city was established in 1032 by the Tanguts.

The Tanguts, known also as the Xia, were an important ethnic group in northwestern China. They were mentioned in Chinese sources as early as the 6th and 7th centuries AD. During that time, the Tanguts were invited by the Chinese to settle in what is today the provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu.

The Chinese were hoping that the Tanguts would act as a buffer zone between them and the Tibetans. Although the Tanguts occasionally joined the Tibetans in attacking the Chinese, on the whole, they served their purpose well. This is seen, for instance, when Emperor Taizong, the second ruler of the Tang Dynasty, bestowed his family’s surname, Li, on the family of the Tangut chief during the 630s AD.

By the 11th century, however, the Chinese, who were now under the Song Dynasty, were forced to turn their attention to the east. This was due to the fact that the they were in conflict with the Khitans, who had founded the Liao Dynasty shortly after the collapse of the Tang Dynasty at the beginning of the 10th century.

As a consequence, the Chinese had little time to focus on the western borders of their empire, and the Tanguts seized this opportunity to establish their own state, Xi Xia, or Western Xia, in 1038. This state flourished for about two centuries, until it was conquered by the Mongols in 1227. The Tanguts were in control of such a powerful state that It took the Mongols about 20 years to subdue them.

Khara Khoto was only captured in 1226, a year before the Tanguts surrendered to the Mongols. According to a popular misconception, the city went into decline once it became part of the Mongol Empire. In reality, however, Khara Khoto continued to prosper.

As a matter of fact, one of the positive effects of the Mongol conquests was the re-establishment of the Silk Road, which would have resulted in more traders passing through Khara Khoto. The city’s prosperity, however, came to an end not long after the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.

In 1368, the Yuan Dynasty was overthrown by the Ming Dynasty, and the Mongols expelled from China. Many of the surviving Mongols are said to have fled to Khara Khoto. They were allowed to settle there by its inhabitants. As the immediate concern of the Ming Dynasty at the time was to impose law and order on their newly gained territories, they were not really bothered about pursuing the fleeing Mongols. By 1372, however, there were so many soldiers at Khara Khoto that the Mongols were able to entertain the idea of launching an invasion on China, in order to retake it from the Ming Dynasty.

When news of the Mongols’ plans reached the ears of the Chinese, they were alarmed. By this time, the Ming Dynasty had consolidated their rule over China, which meant that they were able to address the Mongol threat more forcefully. Therefore, in 1372, the Chinese sent an army to attack the Mongols at Khara Khoto.

This military expedition is mentioned briefly in the historical records of the Ming Dynasty. According to these records, the Mongols of Khara Khoto, who were led by Buyan Temur, surrendered to Feng Sheng, a Chinese general, when he arrived at the city. Feng Sheng’s army was in fact part of a much larger expedition by the Ming Dynasty to destroy the Northern Yuan Dynasty, which the surviving Mongols established.

The Chinese military expedition was a force of 150,000 men, and was divided into three divisions, each advancing to the north of the Gobi Desert via a different route. The western division was led by Feng Sheng, while the eastern and central divisions were led by Li Wenzhong and Xu Da respectively. Despite the strength of their army, the Chinese were defeated by the Mongols. In the centuries that followed, the Mongols continued to menace the Ming Dynasty, until they were conquered by the Later Jin Dynasty (the precursor of the Qing Dynasty) in 1635.

While the fall of Khara Khoto is a small episode in the military expedition of 1372, more details about the event can be found in local legend. According to this legend, the leader of the Mongols at Khara Khoto is said to have been a general named Khara Bator (meaning ‘Black Hero’). The legend also states that the fortifications of the city were so strong that the Chinese were unable to take it by force.

Therefore, they laid siege to the city. In order to increase the pressure on the defenders, the Chinese diverted the Ejin River, which flowed outside the city, and was its only/main source of water. As a consequence, Khara Khoto’s wells soon dried up, and the defenders were forced to choose between dying of thirst or dying in battle against the besiegers.

In one version of the legend, Khara Bator lost his mind due to this dilemma, and murdered his family before committing suicide. Another version of the legend has the Mongol general escape from the city through a breach he made in the northwestern corner of the city walls. Apparently, a hole in the walls large enough for a rider to pass through can still be seen at Khara Khoto.

The remaining Mongol soldiers waited in the city until the Chinese finally launched their final assault on Khara Khoto. The defenders were mercilessly slaughtered, leading to rumors in the present day that the city’s ruins are still haunted by the ghosts of the fallen Mongol soldiers. Until recently, many locals refused to approach the ruins of Khara Khoto, for fear of these ancient ghosts.

Unlike the Mongols, who preserved Khara Khoto when they captured it from the Tanguts, the Chinese did not bother to maintain this city on the edge of the Gobi Desert. As a result, it was abandoned. It has been speculated that one of the reasons for the abandonment of Khara Khoto was the shortage of water.

In the centuries that followed, Khara Khoto fell into ruin. But it was not completely forgotten, as rumors of its existence continued to circulate. In fact, it was in the early 20th century that these rumors led to the rediscovery of the city’s ruins.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Russians were conducting scientific expeditions in northern China and Mongolia. Two of the explorers, Grigory Potanin and Vladimir Obruchev, heard rumors about a lost ancient city somewhere downstream along the Ejin River. Back in Russia, these rumors attracted the attention of the Asiatic Museum in Saint Petersburg (today part of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences). A Mongol-Sichuan expedition under Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov was launched in 1907.

Within a year, Kozlov had discovered the location of Khara Khoto. In May 1908, Kozlov obtained permission to excavate the site from Dashi Beile, a local Torghut chief. In return for his permission to excavate the site, Kozlov gave Dashi Beile a free dinner and a gramophone.

The expedition’s most remarkable discovery at the ruins was a large quantity of texts, including manuscripts, books, and scrolls. These were written in the Tangut language, and were preserved thanks to the dry conditions of the surrounding desert. By the time the first expedition ended, Kozlov had sent 10 chests of artifacts back to Saint Petersburg.

In addition to over 2000 Tangut texts, the chests also contained Buddhist objects. In 1909, Kozlov returned to Khara Khoto, and more manuscripts were unearthed. The artifacts remain in Saint Petersburg to this day, though they have been published as the Russian Collection of Khara-Khoto Manuscripts.

In the decades that followed, other expeditions to Khara Khoto were undertaken by various explorers. In 1917, for instance, Aurel Stein visited Khara Khoto on his third Central Asian expedition, and surveyed the site for eight days. Other archaeologists, such as the American Langdon Warner, and the Swedish Folke Bergman, also visited the ancient city, the former in 1925, and the latter in 1927 and 1929. On his second visit, Bergman stayed at Khara Khoto for a year and a half, surveying and making maps of the area.

The Chinese also took interest in the site. Between 1927 and 1931, for example, a Sino-Swedish expedition, led by Sven Hedin and Xu Bingchang, carried out excavations at the site. Additionally, between 1983 and 1934, Li Yiyou, from the Inner Mongolian Institute of Archaeology, carried out excavations at Khara Khoro, unearthing another 3000 manuscripts.

The remains of the buildings at Khara Khoto have received much less attention than the manuscripts. These structures include the city’s ramparts, which are 9 meters (29.5 ft) high, 4 meter (13.1 ft) thick outer walls, a 12 meter (39 ft) high pagoda, and crumbling mud houses. In addition, there is a building that may be a mosque outside the city walls. It has been speculated that this building would have been used by Muslim traders who stopped at the city.

Considering the fact that Khara Khoto is not easily accessed, due to the surrounding desert, the ruins have not been developed into a tourist attraction. While this means that the site does not reap the benefits brought about by tourism, it also does not suffer from the damages caused by receiving numerous tourists. This may help to preserve the ruins for the future.